Washington Post, 7 May 2010: The suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing appears to have been acting out of anger toward the United States that had accumulated over multiple trips to his native Pakistan, culminating in a lengthy recent stay in which he committed to the bombing plot while undergoing training with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, U.S. officials said Thursday.

U.S. officials said Faisal Shahzad’s radicalization was cumulative and largely self-contained — meaning that it did not involve typical catalysts such as direct contact with a radical cleric, a visible conversion to militant Islam or a significant setback in life.

U.S. officials said they are assembling a portrait of Shahzad — based in part on the account he has given interrogators — that may help explain why he attracted scant scrutiny during his transition from student and young father in the Connecticut suburbs to the man accused of parking a vehicle packed with explosives in Times Square. . . .

. . . . A U.S. official said Shahzad was associated with at least one individual who was in contact with Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born cleric in Yemen who has been tied to the suspect in the attempted Christmas bombing on a Detroit-bound plane as well as the man charged in last year’s fatal shootings at Fort Hood, Tex.

A senior law enforcement official said that Shahzad told interrogators he had watched Aulaqi’s videos on the Web and that he indicated the cleric had inspired him. Shahzad himself does not appear to have communicated with Aulaqi, who is known for his online postings advocating violence against the West.

Investigators are examining the significance of large sums of money that Shahzad brought into the United States. Between 1999 and 2008, Shahzad declared $80,000 in cash when he returned from various trips overseas, said another law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. . . .